Nothing earth shattering, but we need more people like Coburn (on the left or right) in Congress. Someone who actually does what they believe is best for the country.
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Now that Sen. Tom Coburn has retired from Congress, who will publicize government spending on things like Swedish massages for rabbits and "Sesame Street" remakes for Pakistan?
Battling prostate cancer, the Oklahoma physician vacated his seat in December, two years before his second term was up. He leaves behind a legacy marked by government transparency efforts and is perhaps best known for his annual "Wastebook," in which he listed federally funded projects he found to be frivolous.
In several ways, Coburn bucked the norm in the increasingly polarized Congress. An obstetrician by profession, he earned the nickname "Dr. No" for opposing bills even championed by his fellow Republicans if he believed they would spend federal dollars ineffectively.But while Coburn's fiercely conservative, he has one of the friendliest relationships with President Obama of any Republican.
Coburn has since joined the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research to consult for its "Project FDA" - an effort to reform the Food and Drug Administration to help the agency approve drugs more quickly and regulate them more effectively. He recently spoke with the Washington Examiner about what he's up to and why he thinks more members of Congress should retire.
RELATED: From the wacky to the infuriating, Coburn's annual Wastebook catalogs government waste in lean times
Washington Examiner: Now that you're out of Congress, what advice would you like to give your former colleagues?
Tom Coburn: My advice is come home. You're more likely to fix the problems at home than you are there. Until the American people see transparently what's going on, what we have is a charade going on in Washington.
Examiner: Do you see any current members of Congress continuing your watchdog role?
Coburn: I think Sens. Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, several members of the House are working on it. I think they all ought to work on it, it's the No. 1 problem in front of us. You can't just hand those reins over, because it's a combination of leadership and skill set. A member of Congress has to make that their priority, because you don't get attaboys for it, for doing that kind of
oversight work. But it's important for the rest of the country to see it.
Examiner: What do you hope to accomplish through Project FDA?
Coburn: I'm just helping them with strategy in terms of how do you change the FDA and how do you do it legislatively. It's a real need - there are drugs all over the world that can't be used here because we have a bureaucracy that doesn't bend with the time. We're approving things that shouldn't be approved and not approving things that should be approved.
FDA should never approve another narcotic that doesn't have an abuse deterrent formula, because safety must come first. That's just one FDA's way behind the curve. Before I left Congress, they approved another prescription drug with no abuse deterrent, and I thought that was idiocy. That does two things. One, it puts more drugs on the streets that are not abuse-deterrent, but also keeps the abuse-deterrent drugs from being used because you have cheaper drugs out there.
Culturally, from the time I dealt with drug manufacturing to the time I was in Congress to now, I don't think there's a lot of change that's gone on. There's been a change in leadership, but there's been no change in leadership in terms of their accomplishments. I'm pretty critical because, I think, if you look at metrics for new drug approval and you look at metrics for safety, I don't think we've gained on anything, and if anything, we've gone back.
RELATED: Russell follows Coburn's footsteps, identifies $117M in first 'Waste Watch'
Examiner: What are you up to besides Project FDA?
Coburn: I'm working on using generally accepted accounting principles on the government balance sheets and then try to communicate that to the rest of the country. What we hope to do is create a basis among a bunch of think tanks and nonprofits for auditing the feds and created with generally accepted accounting principles. If you really read the Medicare trustees report, you're generally nauseated - they're not using generally accepted accounting principles, so therefore, you don't have a balance sheet that's reflective of where the federal government really is.
Examiner: Do you have groups or people committed to the project?
Coburn: Yeah, but I'm not ready to say who they are. I've got four of them committed. I'm trying to get a rather more liberal one to join with us. This isn't a partisan deal. What we're trying to do is get it up and running and finished in two years - do the work and then do a year promoting it to the American public.
Examiner: Would you ever return to practicing medicine?
Coburn: I just filled in for a former partner who filled in for a missionary in Africa - I took over his practice for six weeks. I would never go back and practice medicine the way it is today, never. I'd have to be a concierge doctor. There's no way I'd play the game they're having to play. It's just so much work that doesn't help a patient.
Examiner: How's your own health?
Coburn: I'm just about to finish up my [cancer] treatments. I'm OK. It's a long, hard battle, but I've done it before.
RELATED: New Tom Coburn report describes Veterans Affairs Department wracked by incompetence, corruption, coverups
Examiner: You have perhaps the best relationship with President Obama of any prominent Republican. Do you think the two of you might partner on anything after he leaves office?
Coburn: I don't know. I talked to him in mid-January. His plate's kind of full and mine is not. I'm not sure we've gotten along so well, we just kind of like each other and are friends. I yell at him on TV sometimes when I disagree with him, [but] I have a genuine favor for him and like him as a person. He could lead on this issue of Social Security and Medicare if he wanted.
Examiner: What's the best thing about leaving Congress?
Coburn: My time's my own.
Examiner: The Affordable Care Act has been in effect for five years now. Do you think Republicans should stop talking about repealing it?
Coburn: The only way healthcare is going to get solved in our country is, let markets allocate the resources. The Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable to the country as a whole, unless [people] have a subsidy. Healthcare doesn't have to be screwed up the way it is. Healthcare was doing really well until the government got involved.
I just spent six weeks practicing medicine, and it is the most screwed-up system in the world. It's so much worse than it was when I went to the Senate, because so many of the dollars are consumed in non-healthcare acts. I had two nurses working for me, and 90 percent of their time was consumed with paperwork. We're generating paper that nobody's reading.
Examiner: In your opinion, why doesn't Congress reform Medicare and enact other government reform measures?
Coburn: It's totally tied to people who are in Congress for a career. If they truly were patriots, they would have fixed Medicare already. Common sense would say, if you're up here and this is the biggest problem, why don't you fix the biggest problem? They're more interested in elections than they are in fixing the health of the country. That's the disgusting part of Washington, that's part of the reason I left.
RELATED: Senate will be worse without Tom Coburn
Examiner: But at least Congress repealed the faulty Medicare sustainable growth rate [SGR] formula, right?
Coburn: I don't think it was faulty. What was faulty was for Congress not to institute the cuts mandated by SGR. [Doctors would] start controlling their expenses, but we sent them a signal that "we've got your back, boys." Had they instituted it instead of had their spines collapse, doctors would have started controlling the costs, but Congress, in its cowardly position, said "oh, no, we can't do that."
Examiner: Which Republican would you like to see win the 2016 nomination?
Coburn: I wouldn't even put anything out there right now, it's too early. No one in the country knows we added $6 trillion in unfunded tax liabilities to our kids last year. We're worried about who the president is going to be 20 months from now, but we're not worried about the $6 trillion unfunded liability. Nobody's talking truthfully to the country about the significance of our problems
_____________________________________
Now that Sen. Tom Coburn has retired from Congress, who will publicize government spending on things like Swedish massages for rabbits and "Sesame Street" remakes for Pakistan?
Battling prostate cancer, the Oklahoma physician vacated his seat in December, two years before his second term was up. He leaves behind a legacy marked by government transparency efforts and is perhaps best known for his annual "Wastebook," in which he listed federally funded projects he found to be frivolous.
In several ways, Coburn bucked the norm in the increasingly polarized Congress. An obstetrician by profession, he earned the nickname "Dr. No" for opposing bills even championed by his fellow Republicans if he believed they would spend federal dollars ineffectively.But while Coburn's fiercely conservative, he has one of the friendliest relationships with President Obama of any Republican.
Coburn has since joined the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research to consult for its "Project FDA" - an effort to reform the Food and Drug Administration to help the agency approve drugs more quickly and regulate them more effectively. He recently spoke with the Washington Examiner about what he's up to and why he thinks more members of Congress should retire.
RELATED: From the wacky to the infuriating, Coburn's annual Wastebook catalogs government waste in lean times
Washington Examiner: Now that you're out of Congress, what advice would you like to give your former colleagues?
Tom Coburn: My advice is come home. You're more likely to fix the problems at home than you are there. Until the American people see transparently what's going on, what we have is a charade going on in Washington.
Examiner: Do you see any current members of Congress continuing your watchdog role?
Coburn: I think Sens. Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, several members of the House are working on it. I think they all ought to work on it, it's the No. 1 problem in front of us. You can't just hand those reins over, because it's a combination of leadership and skill set. A member of Congress has to make that their priority, because you don't get attaboys for it, for doing that kind of
oversight work. But it's important for the rest of the country to see it.
Examiner: What do you hope to accomplish through Project FDA?
Coburn: I'm just helping them with strategy in terms of how do you change the FDA and how do you do it legislatively. It's a real need - there are drugs all over the world that can't be used here because we have a bureaucracy that doesn't bend with the time. We're approving things that shouldn't be approved and not approving things that should be approved.
FDA should never approve another narcotic that doesn't have an abuse deterrent formula, because safety must come first. That's just one FDA's way behind the curve. Before I left Congress, they approved another prescription drug with no abuse deterrent, and I thought that was idiocy. That does two things. One, it puts more drugs on the streets that are not abuse-deterrent, but also keeps the abuse-deterrent drugs from being used because you have cheaper drugs out there.
Culturally, from the time I dealt with drug manufacturing to the time I was in Congress to now, I don't think there's a lot of change that's gone on. There's been a change in leadership, but there's been no change in leadership in terms of their accomplishments. I'm pretty critical because, I think, if you look at metrics for new drug approval and you look at metrics for safety, I don't think we've gained on anything, and if anything, we've gone back.
RELATED: Russell follows Coburn's footsteps, identifies $117M in first 'Waste Watch'
Examiner: What are you up to besides Project FDA?
Coburn: I'm working on using generally accepted accounting principles on the government balance sheets and then try to communicate that to the rest of the country. What we hope to do is create a basis among a bunch of think tanks and nonprofits for auditing the feds and created with generally accepted accounting principles. If you really read the Medicare trustees report, you're generally nauseated - they're not using generally accepted accounting principles, so therefore, you don't have a balance sheet that's reflective of where the federal government really is.
Examiner: Do you have groups or people committed to the project?
Coburn: Yeah, but I'm not ready to say who they are. I've got four of them committed. I'm trying to get a rather more liberal one to join with us. This isn't a partisan deal. What we're trying to do is get it up and running and finished in two years - do the work and then do a year promoting it to the American public.
Examiner: Would you ever return to practicing medicine?
Coburn: I just filled in for a former partner who filled in for a missionary in Africa - I took over his practice for six weeks. I would never go back and practice medicine the way it is today, never. I'd have to be a concierge doctor. There's no way I'd play the game they're having to play. It's just so much work that doesn't help a patient.
Examiner: How's your own health?
Coburn: I'm just about to finish up my [cancer] treatments. I'm OK. It's a long, hard battle, but I've done it before.
RELATED: New Tom Coburn report describes Veterans Affairs Department wracked by incompetence, corruption, coverups
Examiner: You have perhaps the best relationship with President Obama of any prominent Republican. Do you think the two of you might partner on anything after he leaves office?
Coburn: I don't know. I talked to him in mid-January. His plate's kind of full and mine is not. I'm not sure we've gotten along so well, we just kind of like each other and are friends. I yell at him on TV sometimes when I disagree with him, [but] I have a genuine favor for him and like him as a person. He could lead on this issue of Social Security and Medicare if he wanted.
Examiner: What's the best thing about leaving Congress?
Coburn: My time's my own.
Examiner: The Affordable Care Act has been in effect for five years now. Do you think Republicans should stop talking about repealing it?
Coburn: The only way healthcare is going to get solved in our country is, let markets allocate the resources. The Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable to the country as a whole, unless [people] have a subsidy. Healthcare doesn't have to be screwed up the way it is. Healthcare was doing really well until the government got involved.
I just spent six weeks practicing medicine, and it is the most screwed-up system in the world. It's so much worse than it was when I went to the Senate, because so many of the dollars are consumed in non-healthcare acts. I had two nurses working for me, and 90 percent of their time was consumed with paperwork. We're generating paper that nobody's reading.
Examiner: In your opinion, why doesn't Congress reform Medicare and enact other government reform measures?
Coburn: It's totally tied to people who are in Congress for a career. If they truly were patriots, they would have fixed Medicare already. Common sense would say, if you're up here and this is the biggest problem, why don't you fix the biggest problem? They're more interested in elections than they are in fixing the health of the country. That's the disgusting part of Washington, that's part of the reason I left.
RELATED: Senate will be worse without Tom Coburn
Examiner: But at least Congress repealed the faulty Medicare sustainable growth rate [SGR] formula, right?
Coburn: I don't think it was faulty. What was faulty was for Congress not to institute the cuts mandated by SGR. [Doctors would] start controlling their expenses, but we sent them a signal that "we've got your back, boys." Had they instituted it instead of had their spines collapse, doctors would have started controlling the costs, but Congress, in its cowardly position, said "oh, no, we can't do that."
Examiner: Which Republican would you like to see win the 2016 nomination?
Coburn: I wouldn't even put anything out there right now, it's too early. No one in the country knows we added $6 trillion in unfunded tax liabilities to our kids last year. We're worried about who the president is going to be 20 months from now, but we're not worried about the $6 trillion unfunded liability. Nobody's talking truthfully to the country about the significance of our problems
